YSP News

Madison Magazine has named The Young Shakespeare Players as 2015's Gold Winner in two "Madison's Best" categories: Best Youth Performing Arts Group and Best Kids Entertainment. The Young Shakespeare Players were previously voted Madison's Favorite Theater Troupe and Madison's Favorite After-School Program in the 2014-2015 Isthmus Annual Manual survey.

YSP's most recent publication is now available. More Things in Heaven and Earth: What the Young Shakespeare Players Have Taught Us All About Human Potential explores the YSP experience in relation to such topics as brain neuroplasticity, development of empathy, the critical role of language in complex thinking, memorization, and allowing young people executive responsibility in pursuing a worthwhile superordinate goal. Order yours today at our publications page.

Listen to actors & directors talk to Radio Lit about their busy summer at YSP, or read about a production of As You Like It in Square 77!

We are proud to announce the opening of our very first YSP chapter outside Madison, in Brattleboro, VT. YSP East–New England will inspire young people in the region to fall in love with the works of Shakespeare! Read more & register. Read about YSP East in Vermont's Commons Online.

What does an original YSP production look like? Here's a short discussion and footage of "Shakespeare's Show of Shows: Great Comic Scenes from Shakespeare and Sid Caesar."

And here's a scene from the workshop, the popular "Beethoven's Fifth," in which a married couple argues to music!

The Actor's (and Intelligent Reader's) Guide to the Language ofShakespeare, by Richard DiPrima, was developed out of YSP's series of focused workshops on the language of Shakespeare. Read more about that book and all the others that have followed.

YSP performed an original production of a project of similar scope to the Royal Shakespeare Company's 10-hour Nicholas Nickleby—this one bringing to life Dickens’s great final completed novel, Our Mutual Friend. Link to the Directors' Blog for Our Mutual Friend, read more about Dickens at YSP, and watch clips from the productions. Listen to directors & actors discuss Our Mutual Friend (& perform scenes!) on WORT's Radio Literature. Read about the play in the Wisconsin State Journal.

Richard DiPrima explains what a YSP play looks like. Footage from a production of The Tempest,
video by Brad Parkel.